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Sunday, October 27, 2013

Hawaiian Portuguese sausage and Minnesotan wild rice Soup

For 25 years, end of Oct meant it was time to get ready for a long winter. Soups and stews were very comforting especially after a day of racking leaves. It is so different from sunny Southern California. I still do not feel California is home yet. I guess 25 years is a long time.

I was accepted into a new hula halau a month ago. We are having a fun raiser, we are actually selling Portuguese sausage. I tasted the sausage, it was very good and it is very reasonably priced at $2 each!!!
Having in the business for all these years, creating a personal experience has been my business motto. I want to give my "customers" a few recipes with their purchase!!! I am inspired to do something different with the sausage. I brought some wild rice back from Minneapolis last week and I also have some porcini mushroom I picked up in Italy last month. I have all the ingredients to make a perfect soup... Itʻs October and it is Fall after all.

Here is a few things:
1 - You will notice I cut the vegetable in big pieces. Since I am not pre-boiling the wild rice. I want to keep this simple, but I donʻt want all the vegetable to disappear in the soup. The bigger pieces help to hold up the shape in cooking.
2 - I didnʻt peel the potatoes. I am using fingerling, red skin and purple potato here. The skin helps to keep the potato pieces intact.
3 - There is a casing on the Portuguese sausage, it is edible. Itʻs just my preference not to have the pieces of the casing flowing in the soup, I took the casing off.
4 - The porcini mushroom here is to enrich the flavor of the soup, you can certainly skip the ingredient. However I love adding porcini to wild rice. I love that earthy richness for a fall soup.
5 - Remember I made Portuguese bean soup? Cilantro is added at the end. Cilantro is a great compliment to the sausage. If you donʻt like cilantro, replace it with parley
6 - please make sure you keep an eye to the liquid level, it is a longer cooking time - able 2 hours. You may need to add some water..

For vegetarian and vegan, here is a few changes.
1 - you can easily make this soup vegan, by replacing the sausage with a soy sausage.
2 - use 1 can of pre-cooked wild rice instead of the grain. The soy sausage will not work in long cooking time.

If you canʻt get the sausage, kielbasa can be a quick substitute for this.

let it cooked over low heat till the leek starts to disintegrate about 5-8 mins. This will also render some of the fat in the sausage.

Add wild rice, mix well

Add in all the vegetable

Then the chopped porcini

Mix well, then add the reserved liquid from the porcini into the vegetable and sausage

Increase heat to medium high, add stock and water.

Make sure you have enough water and the liquid will cover the vegetable and meat

Bring to a full boil, reduce heat to low. Cover and let the soup cook for about 2 hours. Stir the soup and check the water from time to time. As some of the vegetable breaks down, the soup will get thick. Add more water if it it too thick
Once the wild rice "flowered", basically burst open, it is ready

Check seasoning. You will most likely need to add salt and pepper.

Reason why we didnʻt add salt earlier, the sausage can be salty. I tall depends on the brand, we do not want to over salt.

Just before serving, add chopped cilantro or parsley. Reserve a small amount to garnish at the table.